Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - Lyrics and Music

Lyrics and Music

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" was recorded on August 2, 1965 at Columbia Studios in New York, the same day Dylan recorded "Ballad of a Thin Man", "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Queen Jane Approximately", three other songs that would appear on Highway 61 Revisited. However, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" took more attempts to perfect than the other songs recorded that day; it wasn't until take 16 that Dylan and his band captured on tape the version that was released on the album. According to Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin, the backing musicians on the take that was used on Highway 61 Revisited were Mike Bloomfield on electric guitar, Al Kooper on Hohner Pianet, Paul Griffin on piano, Harvey Brooks on bass guitar and Bobby Gregg on drums. On early takes of the song, Sam Lay was the drummer and Frank Owens played piano. In Heylin's opinion, Gregg's jazzier drumming and Griffin's more fluid piano playing better communicated the feeling of dislocation that Dylan desired for the song. Take 5 of the song, featuring both Lay and Owens, was included on the 2005 album The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack.

Lyrically, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" continues the theme of road weariness from the album's previous song, "Highway 61 Revisited". The singer finds himself in Juarez, Mexico, at Easter time, amidst sickness, despair, whores and saints. While there, he encounters corrupt authorities and women of dubious character, named in the song as "Saint Annie" and "sweet Melinda", before seeking succor in drugs and alcohol. The song establishes a nightmare vision as the singer is influenced by gravity, negativity, sex, drugs, drink, illness, remorse and memory. In the song's final verse, the singer decides he has had enough and finds the means to leave it all behind and head back to New York City, where things may be better. Author Paul Williams has noted that scene and situation are combined into a gorgeous evocation of muddied consciousness in "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", without ever resolving into a clear picture of what the song is about. Despite the sordid details of the singer's experiences in Juarez, the lyrics maintain a sense of humor, and William Ruhlmann of the Allmusic website considers the song a comic tour de force.

Like many of the songs on Highway 61 Revisited, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" has abundant literary references, including images recalling Malcolm Lowry's novel Under the Volcano and a street name taken from Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". The song also uses the phrase "housing project hill" which is taken from Jack Kerouac's novel Desolation Angels. A number of Dylan biographers, including Colin Irwin, Robert Shelton and Andy Gill, have suggested that the song's title makes reference to Arthur Rimbaud's poem "My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)", in which Rimbaud refers to himself as "Tom Thumb in a daze." In addition, some commentators have suggested that there may be a musical reference in the lines "And she takes your voice/And leaves you howling at the moon," since "Howlin' at the Moon" is the title of a song by Hank Williams, a musician who Dylan idolized.

Musically, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" consists of no chorus, but six verses, varied by a handful of chords and Dylan's vocal emphasis. Keyboards, drums and vocals provide texture, while Mike Bloomfield plays Latin Americanesque fills on electric guitar. The keyboard parts in particular make innovative use of two different pianos, with Al Kooper playing an electric Hohner Pianet and Paul Griffin adding a bar room feel on tack piano. In all but the final verse, the even lines rhyme and the odd lines are unrhymed. In the final verse, however, the odd numbered lines rhyme on "ee" and all the even lines rhyme on "uf." This change in the rhyming pattern provides a subtle sense of finality to the final two lines:

I'm going back to New York City

I do believe I've had enough.